Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

At the Palace

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.
To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems.
Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

Herbert Wilcox and his writers obviously worked on the theory that the longest and most complicated way around would give the most confounding element of mystery to "The Yellow Canary" but they got themselves so twisted that their scheme backfired yesterday on the screen of the Palace. It may not be sporting to deliberately mislead an audience into believing a character to be something which it isn't, but it's a pardonable offense, provided the perpetrator has the sagacity to carry it off successfully.However, when the authors of "The Yellow Canary" reach the point where Anna Neagle has to be revealed as a British agent rather than an outcast Nazi-phile they just stop dead and, without any by or leave, the cool, indifferent lady suddenly becomes "palsy" with the fellow who, everybody knows, is from British naval intelligence. Right there the scenarists tossed away whatever chance they might have had of turning out a better-than-mediocre film. For presto! the British acquire all the trump cards, and there's not the slightest doubt that the enemy will fail in his efforts to blow up the vital port facilities of Halifax.Miss Neagle gives a good account of herself as the British lady of quality who isn't as bad as duty forces her to pretend to be. However, it probably would have helped the story immeasurably if her disguise as a friend of the Nazis had been kept up to the last possible moment. And Richard Greene, on leave from the British Army, plays with boyish gusto the role of the naval intelligence officer. Other good performances are given by Albert Lieven, Lucie Mannheim and Valentine Dyall. But "The Yellow Canary" lacks the plausibility necessary for drama, as it does the tension required by a good action picture.